Pattern and Decoration Movement

Red Graze (1967) by Sonya Rapoport, one of the founders of the early New York Pattern Painting School in the late 1960s

Pattern and Decoration was an art movement situated in the United States from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s. The movement has sometimes been referred to as "P&D"or as The New Decorativeness.The movement was championed by the gallery owner Holly Solomon. The movement was the subject of a retrospective museum show at the Hudson River Museum which closed in January 2008. In the mid twentieth century "decorative" was a term only used to detract, in contemporary art parlance. Decorative was equated with trivial.The prevailing negative view of decoration was one not generally shared by non-Western cultures. Intricate and well-thought-out patterning is found in Islamic, Byzantine, and Celtic art.

Pattern and Decoration artists were reacting against minimalism but they often retained the same "flattening grid" frequently employed by minimalist painters. Whereas minimalist paintings were austere, P&D paintings were boldly colored, and sometimes suggestive of floral patterns.
Some work fitting into the P&D movement could be considered applied art. Some of the artists produced work other than paintings, such as tiles made by Joyce Kozloff. There were also connections between the Pattern and Decoration movement and the Feminist art movement.
    * Cynthia Carlson    * Brad Davis    * Valerie Jaudon    * Jane Kaufman    * Joyce Kozloff    * Robert Kushner    * Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt    * Kim MacConnel    * Sonya Rapoport    * Tony Robbin    * Miriam Schapiro    * Ned Smyth    * Betty Woodman    * George Woodman    * Robert Zakanitch